Apple giveth and Apple taketh away: features users miss in iOS 6

It's not just about Maps. Lots of smaller features were removed from iOS 6.

Last month's introduction of iOS 6 gave iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users many things, like Do Not Disturb, new call features, and increased Siri capabilities. iPhone 5 and 4S users now have a cool new Panorama mode in the Camera app, there's Facebook integration where once there was only Twitter, we can sync Reminders and Notes over iCloud, privacy controls have received a complete overhaul, and Passbook is showing some promise.

We also had some (major) things taken away from us with the release of iOS 6. The most obvious of these things is a consistent, built-in transit experience in Maps—or pretty much anything related to iOS 6 Maps at all. But Maps seems to be just about the only thing people tend to name when thinking about iOS 6's shortfalls—or is it? A number of Ars readers wrote me with their own stories about favorite features that used to be part of iOS 5 but were since removed in iOS 6. So, I reached out to the Ars staff and Twitter in order to see what other little things users were missing.

It turns out there are a number of smaller things that people really liked but can no longer access. There are also a few features that people would've liked to see Apple take just a little further. Below is a list of the most commonly mentioned items that are either no longer part of iOS 6 or should be part of iOS 6.

Bring back app gifting

iOS users used to be able to gift apps to other people right from inside the device. When you navigated to a particular app through the iOS App Store app, there was an option to "Gift This App" underneath the ratings and next to "Tell a Friend." This was particularly useful when it came to giving fun or interesting items to friends and family to check out, or for companies to gift apps to employees as a "thank you."

This is unfortunately no longer the case in iOS 6. As noted by Apple's own support document on the matter, this feature was part of iOS 5 and earlier (reverting is "usefully" listed as your only option if you want to continue to gift apps). This is undoubtedly thanks to some of the major App Store changes Apple has made since the release of iOS 6, but we can't see why this feature had to be taken away. Users can still gift apps to other iOS users, but it has to be done through iTunes on the Mac or Windows.

iTunes Match and deleting music

Users who subscribe to Apple's $25/year iTunes Match service were quite happy with the ability to delete specific songs from their iOS devices when the mood strikes. That was, of course, how things used to be with iOS 5.x, but it's apparently no longer the case with iOS 6. Who would want to delete individual tracks anyway? That's a fascist anti-album attitude there, son.

It turns out that this omission is quite irritating to iTunes Match users, though there is an inconvenient workaround for those committed to deleting music they don't want from their devices. Users can turn off iTunes Match altogether on their iDevices and then delete the track from the Music app—but this only works if you're trying to delete a song that was actually downloaded from iTunes Match. Turning off iTunes Match removes all other music that is available to you whether you want it there or not. You also have the option of going home and deleting it from your iTunes library. But then this wouldn't be a very post-PC world, now would it?

Podcasts and music: no longer living together in harmony

Not everyone likes to mix podcasts and music into one playlist, but those who do liked to do it—a lot. I'll admit that I've done this myself, especially when planning out a long flight or road trip. But since the introduction of Apple's new Podcasts app—which has had its ownchallenges when it comes to usability—Apple has continued to separate podcasts from the rest of the pack.

It's no longer easy (or possible, for that matter) for users to create on-the-go playlists within the Music app that include both music and podcasts. It's not even possible to create a playlist within iTunes on the desktop that has a mixture of music and podcasts to sync—you can make the playlist alright, but once you sync, the podcast won't show up in the same playlist on the iOS device.

Don't cry for me, Google Street View

Aside from built-in transit, it turns out that a lot of iOS users made use of Google Street View as part of iOS 5 (and previous) Maps. This was by far the most commonly mentioned item when I asked about missing features on Twitter. Users apparently liked being able to see exactly what a specific address or street looks like when they're navigating around on their iPhones. And some people (such as myself) have a poor sense of direction, so actual photos of the location you're looking for can be a huge help.

Some would argue that 3D flyover mode within iOS 6 Maps is meant to replace this feature, and to some degree, it can. The 3D flyover feature does allow you to see what certain buildings look like at different angles, but it doesn't quite fill in the gaps when it comes to walking or driving down an actual street at human level. What does a specific storefront look like in 3D flyover mode? You can't get close enough to tell. Additionally, many iOS users don't own devices that support 3D flyover mode—it's only supported on the iPhone 5 and 4S—meaning that iPhone 4, 3GS, and original iPad owners have now lost useful features as part of Maps with no real gains.

Give us a YouTube app that can run in the background again

One of the benefits to Apple's default YouTube app was that it could run in the background. Why would someone want to play YouTube videos (emphasis on videos) while doing other things on an iOS device? Sometimes videos show up and—in the case of video blogs or indie bands—all you want is to listen to the audio and you don't necessarily need to see someone's cat in order to get the full experience.

Apple got rid of its own YouTube app as part of iOS 6, however, which wasn't quite seen as a huge deal by most users. This was mostly because Google was quick to release its own YouTube app to replace it, along with a few new features that Apple had been sluggish to implement. But Google's new YouTube app can't run in the background like Apple's YouTube app did, which makes YouTube aficionados sad pandas when using their iOS devices. This is on Google's shoulders, not Apple's, but it's a point that was made often enough by iOS 6 users that we thought it was worth including.

Details that should have been implemented, but weren't

There will always be wish lists a mile long for features that aren't part of iOS 6, but there are some features that are just baby steps away from being great. We don't know what Apple's reasons are for not adding some of these things, but we hope to see them in a future update. They're not "pie in the sky" type wishes either, so Apple, if you're listening, this is what we'd like:

Allow us to add contacts to groups from iOS. You can create and manage groups from the Contacts app on the Mac, and you can use your iOS device to interact with groups when it comes to the Phone app and Do Not Disturb. iOS is clearly aware that the groups exist, but when you find yourself adding new contacts into the device itself, there's no way to add them to any particular group. If you want to group those new contacts, you have to sync the data over to your Mac and manage the groups there. Again, this is not very post-PC-friendly.

Shared Photo Streams should actually be sharable. I spoke highly about Shared Photo Streams in my iOS 6 review, only because I felt Photo Stream by itself was largely a pointless feature. But that doesn't mean it's perfect—the main problem with Shared Photo Streams is that Apple treats them like one-way blasts from one person to others. There's no way to add other parties to a shared stream so that they, too, can contribute photos. If you have a group of friends who like to share photos, every individual with an iOS device would have to create his or her own shared stream to push to everyone else. Wouldn't it be nice if you could add your siblings and cousins to one stream, and everyone could share in the fun?

Third-parties want hooks into Siri. Siri gained some great new features as part of iOS 6, like the ability to look up movie facts and times, and it gained a plethora of sports-related features too. You can now launch apps through Siri, and make Tweets or Facebook posts. But third-party apps still can't plug into Siri directly—apps that do plug into Siri (such as Yelp or OpenTable) are only able to do so with Apple's blessing for the time being. Some developers have been using a proxy server called SiriProxy to achieve this on their own, but it's less than ideal when compared against the potential to make direct API calls to Siri.

What would you add to the list of missing iOS 6 features? If there are enough unique suggestions in the comments, we may gather them up for a reader-based followup. So let's hear it!

Promoted Comments

My biggest complaint is the viewing of app details in the app store. Tapping an app in a list used to give a full screen page with description, screenshots, reviews, etc. Now it's just a small popup box in the middle of the screen.

The only thing that I truly hate about iOS 6 is a very basic feature that was removed from Mail. In every previous version, you could use Settings to control the minimum size of type in emails.That's been removed, so instead of nice, large type that I used to get, I'm stuck with the tiny default type size. It's been a serious irritation for me. I can't understand why something so basic — which was already implemented from the beginning — was removed.

I couldn't care less about most of the things on this list (I actually like the new Maps, for instance), but there are two that bother me:

1) not being able to delete individual songs from iTunes Match is more annoying than I originally thought it would be, and2) DEAR GOD THE PODCASTS APP IS A STEAMING PILE. Over the course of several updates, it has gotten marginally better, but it's still a battery hog, it still randomly marks old podcasts as unplayed (I had one feed where it marked all 300+ episodes as unplayed), it still randomly fails to auto-download. All of the hate that's been directed at the new Maps? Multiply that a thousandfold and that's how I feel about the Podcasts app. I think it's the worst piece of Apple software I've ever used.

(On the plus side, I'd imagine third-party devs are feeling some love; to prevent myself from throwing my shiny iPhone 5 at a brick wall, I gave up on the Apple app and switched to Downcasts, which works great.)

Missing? Just me, but: an App Store app that just works. More than half the time, this. I get the little red notifier of pending updates, open the app, and am greeted by, "All apps are up to date." More than half the time, in the app, when I select "purchased" to display my purchased apps, my yield is a blank screen display (not a "loading" indicator": just blank. Period). Not satisfactory. It's probably a feature. (Just us also, on both iPads, the slide-to-unlock has become really stubborn at power-up. Requiring at times a wait for the screen to go dark, pressing the Home button, and trying again. Another feature. For security.)

It's no longer easy (or possible, for that matter) for users to create on-the-go playlists within the Music app that include both music and podcasts. It's not even possible to create a playlist within iTunes on the desktop that has a mixture of music and podcasts to sync—you can make the playlist alright, but once you sync, the podcast won't show up in the same playlist on the iOS device.

Sure it's possible. Just import the podcasts as a song instead of using the "podcast" feature. I'm sure you could whip up a simple automator script to parse the RSS feed, download the files, and add them to iTunes.

They're just MP3 files... and I assume you would only do this for music podcasts anyway right? Surely nobody would want hypercritical and gangnam style in the same in the same playlist...

Even easier is delete podcasts.app, then force-quit the music.app. Once you start music again, podcasts are back in the 'more' section of music.app.

Wait you mean apps don't run natively in the background? Apple has to write apps into iOS to run in the background? Why that makes no sense for a modern mobile OS like iOS. LOL, piece of crap OS.

Android rules, a truly multitasking OS.

Video apps cannot run in the background - only one app can draw to the screw at a time.

As far as I know, android is the same.

Apple's old YouTube app (discontinued now) and some third party apps pause the video and keep playing the audio when the are in the background. It is true UNIX multitasking, but the window manager locks you down to one window visivle at a time (plus alert dialogs).

Wait you mean apps don't run natively in the background? Apple has to write apps into iOS to run in the background? Why that makes no sense for a modern mobile OS like iOS. LOL, piece of crap OS.

Android rules, a truly multitasking OS.

I used to have a phone where everything could run in the background without the developers needing to do anything special. It's battery life was around 4 hours (standby or talking didn't make any difference). With the extra-large battery you could push that to 6 hours.

Wish Safari on the iPad had a full screen mode like on the iPhone. Even desktop Safari has that option now, as well as JB'd devices under iOS 5. This is the one feature missing that keeps me from upgrading to iOS 6. Aside from finding the omnipresent address bar unnecessary and distracting, I sure do appreciate the extra real estate when using maps.google.com. Yeah, Atomic Web Browser and iCab Mobile both still have full screen modes, but those browsers are just not as stable as Safari so I'd prefer not to have to use them for everything.

I wish that opening a new tab in Safari would put focus in the Search box instead of URL. I still wish it would give some hint before my eyes wander down to the keyboard whether this Search box will come prefilled with my previous search, or if it's safe for me to start typing afresh.

Do I really need to quantify why I want to move frivolous apps to the SD card?

Ok, fine.

I have a really crappy phone. LG Optimus V. It boasts ~190MB of phone storage, and most of that gets eaten up by Froyo and Virgin-installed bloatware. The crux of the problem is that it's not showing its true available space because it's using some sort of doubling algorithm which, for the most part, doesn't actually work. So, when I download Google Music at 2.6 MB, it'll occupy 4-5MB on my phone, and that 8MB of user data suddenly becomes more like 15. I think when I had it installed it actually sat at around 24MB. With other apps I use on a frequent basis such as Dropbox and Google Voice, that's actually more than I have available on my phone (current available space: 22.3 MB).

(One aside: you can't move GVoice to the SD card for the privilege of looking at your voicemail, but you can move GrooveIP, which gives a secondary dialer and offers a VOIP tunnel. Odd, huh?)

The bottom line is that I wind up removing most apps that don't integrate the move to SD feature, and I'm noticing most if not all of Google's own apps can't do that. I find it a little annoying that the principle developer of Android simply opts not to use what I find to be a very critical feature. So, my original point is expecting Google to do something simply because the user would find it a convenient yet non-critical feature is like trying to convince a brick wall to spontaneously turn pink.

It's not all sad as far as the youtube app goes. Jasmine youtube client is far superior to both the current Youtube official app as well as the old Apple youtube app ("iTube"???). It also supports playing in the background, including when the screen is turned off. It's much snappier than the other apps, and has a slick, and clean design.

Siri doesn't work so good in loud places or where data connection is spotty.Android's speech to text feature is actually better since it can be used where ever the keyboard can with jellybean were data connection is poor.

Some of us are lucky enough to have good connectivity. I have 10Mbps wifi at home, and either 25Mbps LTE or 6Mbps 3G in the city.

Siri works great, I use it all the time. Saying "play rock music" is a lot quicker and easier than unlocking my phone, opening the music app, and navigating to the relevant playlist. Same goes for "remind me to call mum when I get home".

salamanderjuice wrote:

Siri isn't/can't be a good replacement for the keyboard in a lot of cases either.

Agreed. I rarely use Siri's dictation feature. But then, I type faster on a physical keyboard than I can talk... and on a touchscreen I'm not much slower.

When it comes to YouTube, I like the free app Jasmine. It's developed by the same guy who makes the Alien Blue app for Reddit, it's simple, and it plays in the background. It also fixes a rather major gap in the iOS6 update: YouTube on the iPad. Google hasn't released an iPad version of their YT app yet, and using the mobile site isn't always ideal. Jasmine works well on the iPad, too, although I don't always like the interface which borrows heavily from Alien Blue.

This. Jasmine is absolutely brilliant.

Though I have no idea how the guy manages to get away with it, surely Google will come calling when they decide they want mobile ads.

I'm going to have to stop reading articles cos I end up making comments when I should be doing something else!

I take issue with the idea of Photostream not bring useful. If you have an iphone, iPad or Mac its VERY VERY useful. If you take a photo on one device it's then easily accessible on another.

Photostream seems to go back months in fact. It's particularly handy when doing eBay or Gumtree ads (although the iphone eBay app is now brill) and writing articles or presentations. Saves copying the photo from one device to another.

Also, it's a handy short term backup should you take some treasured photos and drop then immediately break the phone or have it stolen from your pocket.

It's one of the features I miss on Android - I use Dropbox as a substitute but its not seamless like Photostream and takes more effort.

1. Some sort of queuing system for failed txt messages that automatically sends them once I have a valid network connection again. BlackBerry was doing this years ago and I used to use my commute (which is mostly underground and has no network coverage) to catch up with email/Txts. No point in doing this now because I have to manually resend half the messages at the end.

2. Spend some more time on the email client. In particulara) search is pretty lame and I occasionally have to go to GMail to find messages. b) Also I find it too easy to delete messages and non-obvious how to recover.c) It's more difficult than it needs to be to have multiple email aliases for the reply-to field.

3. Noone knows how to search for txt in a page in Safari - the UI here is broken.

4. I'd like my next iPhone to come with a working phone app. The call quality on my 4s is awful compared to my 10 year old BlackBerry.

I'd like the simplest thing possible, something I've been waiting for ever since the iPad was released in 2010 - a way to enter a tab using the on-screen keyboard! Having to connect a BT keyboard to enter tabs is ridiculous (almost as ridiculous as the convoluted workaround adopted by Pages, the only app I know of that allows you to enter tabs without an external keyboard). A device that claims to be useful for "content creation" needs a way to enter the tab character in any app.

A tab key on the main keyboard would be best of course but I'd settle for a user-settable option added to the spacebar double-tap shortcut or something similar. If all else fails I'd settle for putting the tab key down on the special characters and symbols keyboard, as Android does it.

"Additionally, many iOS users don't own devices that support 3D flyover mode—it's only supported on the iPhone 5 and 4S—meaning that iPhone 4, 3GS, and original iPad owners have now lost useful features as part of Maps with no real gains."

Um, the original iPad can't be updated to iOS6, which sucks, because it's WAY newer than the iPhone 3GS...

Why aren't you using Siri? I mean, why are you unlocking the phone, swiping to a couple screens, opening a folder, and tapping on an app when it is, literally, faster to bring it up to your ear and say, "Open X"?

On other times I've also used, "Remind me to go to Vision Center tomorrow at 5pm", "Remind me to turn on wifi when I leave work", "Remind me to take my daughter to school in 3 days", "Remind me to pick up my medicine today at 6pm", as well as "Search for X" where X is anything I plan to type into a Google search box.

.NET requires years of experience. Almost anybody reading this article can figure out how to do it in automator... most would probably even enjoy it.

There are always going to be some features that are only accessible to geeks, and Apple's "it just works" philosophy does not extend to all areas. It never has.

in principle this may be true. On the other hand, even the basics around it are difficult to understand. I never know whether I need to create a servic, a task or whatever, I don't know how to figure out where they are stored, it's unclear if I need to use that separate action Use Finder Selection of files, why Automator makes either two copies of a file or none, and consider that I only want to create a task that resizes all pictures currently selected in finder. Basically, in the Forrest place, you need to know tha concept of programming,and that's nothing an ordinary user cares for.

Why isn't there Call Blocking within iOS6? Or even "Send to Voicemail"?

There are many among us who are deluged by spam callers. There is currently no way to blacklist calls or anything remotely resembling that - without jailbreaking(we do *want* to have a world where we shouldn't NEED to jailbreak, right?).

There are many among us who are deluged by spam callers. There is currently no way to blacklist calls or anything remotely resembling that - without jailbreaking(we do *want* to have a world where we shouldn't NEED to jailbreak, right?).

I don't have an iPhone but the way I deal with spam callers on my flip phone is to first create a silent ring tone. Second I assign the silent ringtone to the spam phone number.

It's not all sad as far as the youtube app goes. Jasmine youtube client is far superior to both the current Youtube official app as well as the old Apple youtube app ("iTube"???). It also supports playing in the background, including when the screen is turned off. It's much snappier than the other apps, and has a slick, and clean design.

Thanks for that. One of the reasons I haven't updated to iOS 6 on my iPad was the lack of the playing in the background feature in YouTube.

Why isn't there Call Blocking within iOS6? Or even "Send to Voicemail"?

There are many among us who are deluged by spam callers. There is currently no way to blacklist calls or anything remotely resembling that - without jailbreaking(we do *want* to have a world where we shouldn't NEED to jailbreak, right?).

+1 for this, "Block this person with..." would be a nice setting with options of "SMS", "Voice Message", "Decline".

One feature I'd like is for folders to be included in search results in Mail (or for a Find mailbox field to be added to the "Move to" folder view). I have hundreds of folders for my work Exchange account and archiving emails between my inbox and them is possible but a real pain.

Transit is something I never used in Maps - Google's data for London is woeful - and therefore it isn't something I've missed. Conversely City Mapper, which is one of the top recommendations for Londoners, is freaking awesome (ffs, it even gives you journey estimates for horse riding) The minor inconvenience of having no in-built transit options in Maps is far outweighed by having an app that is much, much superior to Google's half-baked pathetic effort. Street View, however, is a big loss.

- The calendar differentiates between free, busy, tentative and out of office. At the moment you cannot tell until you open the item. - Ability for apps to sit in the notification center. - A user dictionary that remembers words. I'm getting fed up of "eta" always being corrected to "era". - Predictive text correction that takes into account the word you typed previously. Meaning that you'll never get some completely insane word suggested that makes zero grammatical sense. - Information on the lock screen - next two/three appointments for example. - Hyperlinked phone numbers to take into account incorrect inclusion of the trunk code in an internationally formatted number. Eg. if someone writes +44(0)7921345678 then the phone correctly drops the 0 (like the Blackberry does). - Description of the country and area on an incoming call and in call history, I think that you get some of this in the USA but it's not made it to the UK. For example, a call from +44207... would be reported as "London, UK" and from +49211... would be reported as "Dusseldorf, Germany". - Support for defining the default app for a number of intents (eg. opening a URL). - Proper support for intents so that "Share to" and other functionality can be accessed in other apps.

My biggest complaint is the viewing of app details in the app store. Tapping an app in a list used to give a full screen page with description, screenshots, reviews, etc. Now it's just a small popup box in the middle of the screen.

I haven't downloaded iOS6 yet (5 is slow enough on my 3GS) but does anyone know if it allows aspect lock in landscape mode? That is the single most glaring missing feature in iOS to me. It's far easier to read websites in lanscape, but when laying back in bed holding the phone above me the sensors that detect the screen orientation go nuts and always think I'm holding it in portrait mode when I'm really holding it in landscape.

The two glaring items they've left out (to me) are SMS quick compose/reply and the ability to email/send SMS to groups of people.

I know you can use third party apps to group email/SMS, but it's a pain. SMS particularly when not everyone has iMessage installed and you have to go through the settings, turn off iMessage, turn off MMS, and THEN send it. Very far from "just working".

For quick compose/reply on the SMS front, this is THE feature that keeps me jailbreaking. Should I really have to completely switch out of my current app in order to do this!? Jailbreakers have been doing it since iOS 4, there's no excuse for this not to be implemented by now.